How to eat a mango

For TBT: Originally published in 2011:

Here's another peek at some of the writing that I've been doing about my early childhood in Guantanamo, Cuba. This particular chapter has a section which deals with the art of mango-eating which I think you may find of interest.

The chapter in question essentially describes my neighborhood and the below segment picks up on a house up the street from my grandparents' house which had a huge mango tree: 

Next to Mongo’s house was another walled house where Enrique “El Manco” lived. His nickname was slang for someone missing a hand, although Enrique had both hands, but was missing several fingers from one of them. His front yard boasted a huge mango tree. It was easily the largest tree for blocks around, and during mango season, the huge branches, loaded with fruit, that hung above the street were an unending supply source of mangos for everyone with a good aim to knock some of them off with rocks and then pick them off the street.

But soon all the mangos from the branches that over hanged onto the streets were gone, and then we had to actually sneak into the walled garden and climb the tree and knock some mangos to the ground, climb down, grab them and scram back to the street before anyone in the house noticed the intrusion. This was nearly impossible, as it seemed that every member of Enrique’s family was always on the lookout for mango thieves, as the mango tree was a source of income, since they sold them by the bag-full from the side of their house.

The art of eating a mango deserves some attention.

There are several ways. The first one, and the most easy to perform by amateur mango eaters, is simply to take the mango, cut into it with a knife and slice off the meaty parts, peel the skin off and eat the hard slices.

Seldom did a mango knocked off Enrique’s tree make it to any house to be eaten this way.

Once you knocked off a mango, and provided that no one grabbed it before you got to it – as there was always a group of mango rock throwers, and anytime a mango came down, it was always a debate as to exactly whose rock had brought the fruit down. Cubans love to debate just about anything, and the mango debates provided very good training on this art. Anyway, once you had a mango, then you ran to either the shade of my grandparents' house’s portico or the bakery’s veranda to enjoy the fruit.

Here’s the proper way to eat a mango.

First roll it back and forth on the ground, a tiled floor is perfect, to mush up the inside of the mango. Then, using you fingertips, really liquefy the mango pulp by gently squeezing the mango over and over. Once that pulp is almost nothing but juice, with your teeth puncture a small hole at the tip of the mango.

You can now squeeze the mango and suck the juice through that hole. It’s sort of a nature-made box drink!

Once all the mango juice is all gone, now comes the messy part. No one, not even the British, has ever discovered a way to eat a mango without making a mess.

Once the juice is gone, then you bite the skin, strip it away from the seed, lick it clean and then begin to bite away all the strands of mango fiber still attached to the seed. By the time a good mango eater is done with a mango, the mango seed looks like a yellowish bar of used soap, slick and fiber-less.

Of course, your face and chest area are now completely covered in dried up, sticky mango juice, so then you'd usually head back home to clean up with the garden hose and drink water to quell the thirst that the mango sugar causes.

That’s how one eats a mango – at least in my childhood neighborhood.

On creating art and not knowing where it ends

When I was in Miami doing the Miami International Art Fair a few years ago, I received a phone call from a very well-known poet. 

Once he identified himself, he explained that he was calling because he was interested in using one of my drawings, which is in his collection, in his next book. The drawing, he explained, which he hangs in his kitchen in New York, has managed to be come a stern and vigilant observer of his daily activities, and he has written a poem about it. 

I was honored by both the request (to which I gave my permission) and also curious as to where he had acquired the piece, which once described I recognized as a piece that I did maybe a decade ago. 

He told me that he had acquired the piece at an auction in New York, where he resides. We connected rather well and spoke for nearly 30 minutes, and I promised to send him more images of my available work. 

But the point that stayed behind with me, and something that I’ve been mulling for years now, is the curious travels and life of a piece of artwork once it leaves the artist’s studio and is acquired by someone. 

I first started dispersing my artwork back when I was a teenager in Brooklyn. Around when I was 13 or 14, I lived in a six apartment brownstone in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. 

The building was owned by my uncle, and part of my duties was to sweep and mop all three floors every weekend. As such I had access to the basement, which was used mostly for storage and had a rather sizable assortment of old paint cans of all sizes and colors. 

Those paints, along with regular commercial paint brushes and cardboard were my first canvasses, and I used to paint imaginary landscapes on them, which then I would take to Manhattan and sell them in parks around 14th Street, across the street from Macy’s. 

Then when I was in art school at the University of Washington, I was one of the many artists who sold artwork at Seattle’s wonderful Pike Place Market. It was there that I sold nearly every one of my art school assignments as well as hundreds of watercolors and drawings created specifically to be sold.

 After art school I moved to Europe, returned to the US for postgraduate school, moved back to Europe, returned again for good, and all through that time began to sell work at gallery shows and art fairs, and by my own estimates I believe that by now I have sold, given away, traded and dispersed well over 5,000 paintings, drawings, prints, reproductions and sculptures in the last 50 years. 

Out of that rather huge number, I have no idea where 98% of them are, although all through those same years I have never, ever, stopped producing art. Even when I was in Beirut, in the middle of a war back in the early 80s, I never stopped drawing and creating art. 

Every once in a while, like the phone call from the New York poet, a work’s location returns to me, and with the emergence of the Internet, more and more have been making their way back to me as often their new or original owners want to gather information on the creator. 

I’ve had emails from Europe, Latin America and Asia, with images attached, as someone who has come across and acquired a Campello wants to know more about it, or confirm its provenance. Works have been donated to universities and other to institutions. Collectors have bought them at auction (oddly enough mostly in Europe), and people have even acquired them at antique shops and other stores - including Thrift shops. 

It’s a fascinating trek that the art takes and that occurs without the knowledge of the artist. I often regret that I never kept better records of where and who owns the work (I still don’t), but then again, I also like the fact that these pieces are dispersed all over the planet and will probably be still around for centuries after I am gone. 

Some don’t even have owners. 

Between 1975 and 1992 I created about 100 small figurative clay sculptures that I then buried underground throughout Europe (mostly in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom). I wanted them to be “discovered” accidentally by future diggers. Some may never see the surface again. 

I’ve also done a “hotel art intervention” project where I would disassemble whatever hotel art was in my room and either create a new piece of art done on the back of the print or whatever was in the frame, or in the rare cases where a bad painting (usually one of those one of a million Chinese oil paintings), I would “add” to the painting, and reframe the work and re-hang it in the room. 

I did this dozens and dozens of times over the years and just did one during one of my last hotel stays. And in three instances, between 1977-1981, wearing a pair of white workman’s overalls, I installed three separate framed large watercolors in three different lobbies of three different skyscrapers in downtown Seattle.

I haven’t got the foggiest idea where any of that work is today. But they’re out there, most of them anyway, and years from now, when I’m no longer here, they’ll still be out there. 

It’s a good feeling.

Can art prices be negotiated?

That is one of the most common questions that newbie art collectors ask me and one that pops up all the time at the ubiquitous expert panels on collecting art, selling art, making art or whatever art. 

My first warning is to always advise everyone to beware of "art galleries" that have "art sales." Although art is a commodity, a reputable art gallery doesn't have "sales" with drastic price reductions. 

All that would accomplish is to destroy the price base of an artist. 

Leave the "sales" approach to rug stores. 

A collector can always try to negotiate prices, as some dealers are open to it and some aren't. Most dealers automatically give known or returning collectors a "collector's discount", and artists should be aware of this industry policy, and it should certainly be specified in the contract. 

Most reputable dealers will try to accommodate a client's requests and will often consult the artist on specific pricing issues, such as the case (in my own experience), where a collector wanted to acquire 40 paintings at once from an artist, but clearly also wanted a major discount. 

If you are a collector, beginning or not, and really want that particular piece of art, but because of your financial issues cannot afford the offered price, be honest and say so and see where that leads. Often the dealer can offer you other work by the artist in your price range. 

Be weary of price reductions of more than 10% as huge discounts hurt the artist's sales record and most reputable dealers will not do them. It is also perfectly reasonable to ask for a small discount if you are buying several pieces of art at once. 

And the most common mistake made by artists themselves: selling their own work directly at vastly reduced prices from the gallery price. This is perhaps the most fatal mistake that any artist can do to destroy his/her work's price base. 

Prices should be aligned and essentially the same regardless of where they are sold, at the gallery, at the studio or at the art fair.

How to make Fufú

 Fufú: This is how you do it 

That image to the right is not a banana, but a plantain (in Spanish platano). 

The plantain is most commonly eaten as a side dish in many Latin American cuisines, where it is simply boiled and then served as a side dish with perhaps a little olive oil and salt to add some flavor, especially if it's a green plantain, which are rather tasteless by themselves. 

The ripe ones are quite tasty and sweet, and are usually served sliced and fried. A few years ago you could only find them in Latin American bodegas, but now most major supermarkets carry them. 

But let's look at the green plantain. 

In most Latin American restaurants where it is offered, it is offered as a boiled side dish. In Cuban restaurants (and many Miami art galleries) it is also served as tostones, which essentially involves slicing up the plantain, frying it in olive oil for a while, taking it out and crushing it, and frying it again. Add salt and you're done. 

But Fufú is the real king of plantain dishes and it is rarely seen in any restaurants, even Cuban ones.

I think that maybe it is because Fufú possibly developed in the eastern part of Cuba (a province once called Oriente), and it may not be as well known or served in Havana, which is the only place that most tourists visit when they visit that unfortunate island and contribute money to the Cuban Armed Forces, which is who owns most of the tourist industry.

With its massive forests and mountains, a large African population from Spain's terrible slavery trade, coupled with its large French immigrant population which migrated to Cuba after the Haitian independence wars, a lot of Chinese working on the railroads that connected the sugar mills, and its concentration of Galician, rather than Castillians, Catalans, or Andalucian Spaniards, Oriente evolved into a very distinct region in Cuba, quite different from Havana and the other Cuban provinces, and so did its Cuban Spanish language and its cuisine. 

Oriente is where Bacardi rum was invented, and where Hatuey beer was created, and where the mojito and Daiquiri were invented... get my drift? 

And in Oriente the humble plantain is eaten as a very delicious side dish called Fufú, with the accent in the last "u" like in Hai-ku.... foo fú! 

Start with a couple of green plantains. Wash then and cut out the tips of the plantains, but leave the skin on. Cut the plantains into three equal pieces per plantain and bring to a boil in water and boil for a few minutes until the green skins start to peel away. 

While they are boiling, in a frying pan heat a generous dose of olive oil with a seasoning dash of salt and pepper (or Goya Sazon is you really want some exotic spices). 

Add chopped fresh garlic and chopped (very small pieces) onions to the hot olive oil and fry the garlic and onions; lots and lots of garlic. 

While the onions and garlic fry (don't overcook), the plantains should be ready, so pull them out, throw away the green skins and put the cleaned hot plantains on a large flat plate and mash them as you would do for mashed potatoes, but not to an extreme - they should be lumpy. 

Once they are broken up some, add the frying pan mixture of oil, garlic and onions and mash it all into the plantain mixture. Salt to taste and this culinary work of art is ready to eat!

The curious and disgusting case of H.G. Carrillo

Via The WaPo, GWU Professor Lisa Page sounds very apologetic as she reveals that a guy from Detroit passed himself off as a Cuban for years and years, and only after his unfortunate death, did his immediate family "out" him.  Read Page's "explanation" here.

Page asks in the headline: When writer Hache Carrillo died, the world discovered his true identity. What does that mean for his legacy?

Seriously? That's in question?

I can tell Professor Page that - at least for me - it (a) upsets me for a reason that I'm not 100% sure as to "why" and (b) leaves me perplexed that a guy from Detroit could get away with this for a large chunk of his life.

Lisa Page is co-editor of “We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America.” She is also assistant professor of English at George Washington University, where Carrillo also taught.

Five gets you ten that he never participated in a single event in Miami.  He would have been nailed as the impostor that he was within the first few seconds of a conversation with a 10 year old Cuban kid.

How about his writing about the "Cuban immigrant experiences" - from which I can see how a lot of reviewers fawned over?

I've had never read Carrillo - in fact, I had never heard of him until he was outed and THAT made a story in Cuban-American circles, as most of us had never heard of him either.

Shouldn't that have raised an alarm somewhere?

The Babalu Blog notes:

I doubt he visited Cuba, and he apparently steered clear of real Cuban exiles and Miami. According to newspaper archives, he was never featured in Miami’s Nuevo Herald and only once in the Miami Herald (a 2004 review of his novel, but only about the book, not him). In 2005, he visited a college in central Florida to present his novel, and the Orlando Sentinel ran a brief interview with him. Asked who’d had the most influence on his writing, he named several authors–who included no Cubans, not even Reinaldo Arenas, but did include Gabriel García Márquez, who is anathema to the Cuban American community. It should have smelled fishy, but Orlando is not Miami.

 Let's read Carrillo/Carroll and see how long before he starts sounding fishy...

I found a short story titled "Cosas" here, and by the third word in the story my alarms already went up! 

The story starts like this: "Esteban y Casamiro were headed for a place that did not exist and they were out of cigarettes." 

I've never heard of any Cuban named "Casamiro" ---- "Casimiro" with an "i" yes... but "Casamiro" - but maybe it's just me...

I'm on page 2, and it is clear to the most casual observer that this impostor is not Cuban - at least through his writing, which uses Spanish words like "pinche" and "vatos" that are NOT part of Cuban slang (not to mention that he misspells "cerveza" as "cervesa." 

On page 23 I grudgingly give him a "maybe" on his use of "Santo patron" -- doesn't sound "Cuban" - more Mexican, as Cubans usually just say "mi santo" to refer to whatever saint's day it is on their birthday. Also on that page he writes: "Esculpame Padre" - when he should have written "Disculpame."

Page 30 he refers to Cachita as "La Virgen del Cobre" which (maybe it's just me) but sounds very odd, as she's usually referred to as either "La Virgen de la Caridad de El Cobre" or "La Virgen de la Caridad"... but the "del Cobre" bothers me... should be "de El Cobre." He also calls her "Señora", which sounds weird to me in praying to Cachita, which is how Cubans refer to the Virgin. Perhaps I'm being overly cautious now...

Page 30: He refers to a whore as "la maja" - I don't even know what that means? Unless that's a weird reference to Goya's Maja?

Page 33: "Chingao" is a Mexican curse word, not Cuban - If anything Cubans would say "Singao" with a very soft "s" sound.

In page 35 Casamiro curses these words: "Buche! Chancho!" - no idea what those curses mean, but they're not Cuban slang... a "buche" is a "swallow/sip" as "un buchito de cafe" (a sip of coffee).

Page 36: The cursing here is Google Spanish... makes me cringe that somehow this passed as Cuban cursing... any reader of Cuban ancestry would immediately start dialing numbers in Hialeah.

Last page: Mofongo is a Puerto Rican dish - not Cuban -- this is the ultimate insult!

I'm torn by the fact that this fabricator of a false identity perhaps got where he got - including a faculty post at George Washington University - by eschewing his African-American identity in exchange for an Afro-Cuban identity, and in the process perhaps... what?

Lisa Page (and others) seem to give him a "pass" because he was clearly a nice guy and loved by his students.  It saddens me that his family, and his mother (who after his death was quoted as saying that she was "really hurt by the whole façade" had to live through this fakery and most immense of cultural thefts.

It saddens me that Herman Glenn Carroll - his real name - had to live for over two decades with the weight that this immense lie must have carried on his conscience. I feel sorry for him.

And I still cannot comprehend how... in the age of information, this happened - did not a single "real" Cuban-American or Cuban scholar ever read anything that this guy ever published and raise an eyebrow?

Does it say something about the critics that reviewed his work and the organizations the heaped prizes on him?

Makes my head hurt.

Update: I've expanded the article here.

Jacob Lawrence

When I was in the Navy, moving every 2-3 years was part of the deal - and I hated each one!

One of the few good things about moving is when you find things that you had forgotten that you had stashed away. And a nice surprise during one of my last moves was the re-discovery of this small (7 inches x 5.5 inches) portrait of one of my professors. 

It's a portrait of Jacob Lawrence that I created back when I was a student at the University of Washington School of Art many decades ago.

He is/was of one of the most influential and courageous American artists who's never been given a show at the National Gallery of Art  -- although the Phillips Collection did step up to the challenge of a major Washington, DC area art museum actually focusing on a great artist who just also happened to be an African-American, and put up a great exhibition a few years ago.

On Referral Commissions

Artists and art dealers should always remember this rule (especially in a small town such as the Greater DC area is): You reap what you sow. 

A few years ago, a well-known DMV area curator emailed me to let me know that she had referred to me a collector who was looking for figurative drawings. 

The usual referral commission in the business of art is 25%, so I emailed her back and asked to verify that percentage and she did. The collector then came to my studio (a.k.a. the laundry room of my house) and bought a couple of drawings, and I immediately sent the curator a check for her commission. 

She then emailed me back a few days later and thanked me for my promptness.

Conversely, a while back a couple of different curators approached me asking for help in finding some artists for a specific acquisition project. I spent some time with each one of them, and then gave them a list of artists, as well as the artists' contact information. 

I then contacted those artists and/or their gallery dealer, and told them that I was referring curator so-and-so to them in order for the curator to view and possibly purchase work from them. 

There were about 15-20 artists that I referred and who were then contacted by the curators of these two separate projects. 

Some of the artists are represented by us, and thus they know (because our contract is very clear on that issue) what a referral commission is. Several of the other artists (whom are not represented by us, or in some cases by any other gallery) emailed me to thank me for the referral, and subsequently even a few of them emailed me to let me know that the curators had purchased artwork. 

Some never even emailed or contacted me to thank me for the referral, but most did. So far only one of those artists has asked what our referral commission is, and I am sure that if/when a sale is made, that the gallery will get a check for that commission from that one artist. 

Let's see what happens with the rest of them... you reap what you sow.